Arcane Topic Warning: Part the Third

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"The shilling was based on the solidus (originally a gold coin weighing about 4.5 grams) as was the old frech Sou (the "/" was orignally a long "s""

Only indirectly: Charlemagne ordained that the basis of Frankish coin would be one pound (Tours) of silver, subdivided into 20 solidi (sols) or 240 denarii (deniers); this Carolingian system was copied by Offa of Mercia. The late-Roman and Byzantine solidus was, as you say, a gold coin (and worth a heckuva lot more than 1 sol or shilling, despite being only 1/3 the size); how the misnaming occurred is a mystery.

A-S scilling or shilling in place of sol/solidus is of unknown origin; what we do know is that in A-S times it was the value of a sheep. There was no actual shilling coin in England until the Tudor era.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

"The shilling was based on the solidus (originally a gold coin weighing about 4.5 grams) as was the old frech Sou (the "/" was orignally a long "s""

Only indirectly: Charlemagne ordained that the basis of Frankish coin would be one pound (Tours) of silver, subdivided into 20 solidi (sols) or 240 denarii (deniers); this Carolingian system was copied by Offa of Mercia. The late-Roman and Byzantine solidus was, as you say, a gold coin (and worth a heckuva lot more than 1 sol or shilling, despite being only 1/3 the size); how the misnaming occurred is a mystery.

A-S scilling or shilling in place of sol/solidus is of unknown origin; what we do know is that in A-S times it was the value of a sheep. There was no actual shilling coin in England until the Tudor era.

You are, of course correct. I was trying to be brief and over simplified. And before you get to it, I am fairly sure a florin of Florence (being gold) was worth a heck of a lot more than 2 shillings. And yes, a Roman solidus was a lot of money, it was after all the equivalent of a Roman soldier's annual pay. And as for the extreme diffence in time between when the shilling was recognized as a unit of commerce and when there was actually a coin of that value, that sort of reminds me of how accounts were still being run in guineas until (I think decimalization) despite no Guinea coins being minted since Victoria. I think she was the one who minted the first sovereigns (If I am in error please forgive me on the grounds that I am 1. forgetful, 2. American and 3. Thanks to this thread now have a head filled with the monetary coversions of Feudal Japan (I collect that too) which make those of the Frankish system simple.)

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Worse yet was Valois/Bourbon France, where the coinage had no fixed denomination relative to the money of account, the livre; official values were periodically promulgated by royal decree.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Worse yet was Valois/Bourbon France, where the coinage had no fixed denomination relative to the money of account, the livre; official values were periodically promulgated by royal decree.

Actually that probably ties it with Feudal era Japan. While the ryo did techically have a fixed value of 3 ko of rice, the coins were debased so often and so severelyin both size and purity (a kechio koban (one ryo piece of the Tokugawa period is something like 4 times the size and has something like 5 times the gold per unit weight of the ones issued in the 1830's-1850's )that merchants tended to give preference to counterfeit coins for change, provided that they were older counterfeits (since while they had less gold than the coins they were counterfeiting, they still had more than the contemporary officials). or the fact that larger transactions were usually done with officially sealed packets of coins with the value written on it, which were never supposed to be opened (when they were, they invariably contained far less coins that the value written on them, so accidentally tear the paper and you lost about a quarter of the value ( a bit like how the larger oban had a face value of 10 but a gold content of about 7.5 since they really werent supposed to ever be spent (they were pretty much only used for official rewards and payments so they tended to be saved as honorary mementoes, a bit like Maundy Money.) Then of course there was the fact that gold and silver traded at almost 1:1 (given their isolation policies, nearly all precious metals in Japan were locally mined, and the two are found in roughy equal amounts there) This didn't really cause any local problems. But became a nightmare once Perry opened the country and sailors suddenly realized that every moneylender in Yokohama would happliy exchange a koban (which even in it's debased form still had about $1.25's worth of gold in it) for silver coins of around quarter size. At one point the amount of gold leaving Japan got so severe exporting it was actually made a capital offense.
Imperial China was rather odd too since the only "official" government coin was the 1 cash piece those bronze ones with the square holes (multiple cash coins do exist but were usually only issued at times when copper shortages or sieges made issuing the normal kind infeasible). All of the silver and gold "coins" (more often boat shaped sychee and small gold bars) were private issues and had no regulation.
I'm going to shut up now, as this has gotten WAAY off topic.